Between the Poles

Geospatial and BIM will be key to transforming construction

In a recent report, Imagining construction’s digital future, McKinsey & Company suggests that the construction industry is ripe for disruption and two of the technologies that it believes will be key in that anticipated transformation are goespatial and BIM.  

The McKinsey report presents data that shows that large construction projects typically take 20 percent longer to finish than scheduled and are up to 80 percent over budget. Construction productivity has actually declined in some markets since the 1990s and financial returns for contractors are relatively low and volatile.

The report finds that construction has been slow to adopt process and technological innovations. R&D spending in construction lags other industries.  Construction R&D  is less than 1% of total industry revenue compared to 3.5-4.5 % in the auto and aerospace sectors.  And construction spending on IT is low compared to other industries.

The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that the world will need to spend $57 trillion on infrastructure through 2030 to keep up with global GDP growth. This is a massive incentive for the  construction industry to transform productivity and project delivery through new technologies and improved practices.

McKinsey has identified five technologies that it believes will be transformative in the construction industry.  Th first two are geospatial technologies and BIM.

Disruptive technologies: Geospatial and BIM

Geospatial

About 4 million excavations are carried out on the UK road network each year to install or repair buried utility pipes and cables. Not knowing the location of buried assets causes practical problems that increase costs and delay projects, but more importantly, it increases the risk of injury for utility owners, contractors and road users. The problems associated with inaccurate location of buried pipes and cables are serious and are rapidly worsening due to the increasing density of underground infrastructure in major urban areas.  In the U.S. it is estimated that an underground utility is hit every minute.  Underground utility conflicts and relocations are the number one cause of project delays during road construction.

These type of unforeseen problems are a major reason that projects are delayed and go over budget. Discrepancies between ground conditions and early survey estimates can require costly last-minute changes to project scope and design. New techniques that integrate high-definition photography, 3-D laser scanning, ground penetrating radar in conjunction with other technologies and geographic information systems make it possible to reduce the risk of hitting underground utilities.

Reality modeling using phodar and LiDAR technologies provides high-quality 3-D images and point clouds that can be integrated with building information modeling (BIM).  Used in conjunction with ground-penetrating radar, magnetometers, and other equipment, LiDAR can generate above-ground and underground 3-D images of project sites.  A vendor has recently offered an above ground LiDAR scanner combined with a ground penetrating radar array that can scan above and below ground at up to 15 km per hour.  This is particularly important in congested urban or  environmentally sensitive sites where disturbance needs to be minimized.

These advanced survey techniques are complemented by geographic information systems that allow maps, images, distance measurements, and GPS positions to be overlaid. This information can then be uploaded to other analytical and visualization systems for use in project planning and construction.

Modern survey technology is more accessible than ever because costs have come down substantially. An light-weight imaging laser scanner with software that runs on an iPad has been introduced at a breakthrough price if $16,000.  Light-weight and low cost high-resolution cameras and laser scanners can be mounted on standard industrial drones. Specialized technology providers offer cost-efficient survey packages, including drone and UAV equipment, data uploading, and processing services, as well as software to manage drone flights, data capture, and dashboards to visualize information.

BIM

The construction industry has yet to adopt an integrated platform that spans project planning, design, construction, operations, and maintenance. The industry still relies on bespoke point solutions.  Designers, contractors, and operators use different software that do not sync with one another.  There is no single source that provides an integrated, real-time, full-lifecycle view of project design, cost, and schedule.

McKinsey reports a study found that 75 % of those that adopted BIM reported a positive return on their investment. They also reported shorter project life cycles and savings on paperwork and material costs.  A number of governments, including those in Britain, Finland, and Singapore, and in the future probably France and Russia mandate the use of BIM for public infrastructure projects.

McKinsey believes the future lies in 5-D BIM, which is a five-dimensional representation that includes a project’s cost and schedule in addition to the spatial design in 3-D. It also includes such details such as geometry, specifications, aesthetics, thermal, and acoustic properties. A 5-D BIM platform allows designers, owners and contractors to collaborate on a project.  The visual and intuitive nature of 5-D BIM gives contractors a better chance to identify risks earlier and thus to make better decisions.  McKinsey argues that to get the full benefit of BIM technology, project owners and contractors need to incorporate its use right from the design stage, and all stakeholders need to adopt standardized design and data-reporting formats compatible with BIM. In addition, owners and contractors need to dedicate resources for BIM implementation and invest in capability building.  When combined with reality modeling and geolocation, 5-D BIM technology offers a way of providing the full-lifecycle BIM modeling that the British government expects will contribute to reducing public infrastructure costs over the lifetime of a facility by 40% or more.

SPAR2016: Greg Bentley on geo-coordination,mapping underground infrastructure, and information flow in construction

At the Spar 3D Expo and Conference in Houston Greg Bentley gave a keynote in the morning in which he especially focused on reality modeling and how this technology had been applied to model in 3D the route and venues during the Pope's visit to Philadelphia.  He emphasized how useful the model had been for the event organizers and the security people.

Greg, this morning in your talk you mentioned better project delivery and better asset performance and reliability in the same sentence. Is Bentley moving in the direction of enabling a full lifecycle construction process ?

While almost all significant construction projects are done from a 3D model, almost always it is a model created from scratch by the construction contractor.  We use the term construction modeling for this.  But by losing the design model at the beginning of construction, you have just neutered the design intent and optioneering that the design professionals did with their design model.  You could say it's great that construction enterprises are always using 3D, and it is. But starting a new construction model prevents the information reuse of the design model for better asset performance. To the extent that the asset was designed for better asset performance, that potential is lost.

During the operations and maintenance phase of a facility, the digital engineering models should serve as the digital DNA and be the frame of reference for the baseline operating decisions needed to enable the asset to perform as it was designed. But if there is a disconnect at the construction phase, then the work of the engineers, which should be paying off over the full lifecycle of the asset, is absolutely truncated in terms of benefits from the engineering design.

I believe we need to attract digital natives to the infrastructure professions.  We hope that they are joining an engineering culture that is not going to continue to be paid only by the hour. Because if its value extends over the entire lifecycle, the engineers' work is not limited to design.  They deserve greater credit for their intellectual property in their models, because they will be useful to make operations and maintenance decisions.

For us the construction phase is a challenge. We started on the design side and then expanded into asset performance. We are number one in some categories of asset reliability, but the potential to link those can be limited by the actual construction process.

How do you see technology helping to surmount this problem of information loss at the construction phase ?

As software developers we have to make sure that it is feasible for the the construction enterprise to start with the design model and reference to it. We have new construction modeling software that is incremental for and not a replacement for the design model. But you have to make sure that this approach pays off during construction.

We are the leader in the world in workface planning with our ConstructSim product. 4D is traditionally construction sequencing and staging. 5D goes beyond that in level of granularity by assigning the actual work for each craft in the field. The difficulty with 5D is that it's an order of magnitude more data and transactions, and it has to fit into the enterprise environment of construction because it needs to relate to materials, layout, and so on.  We have solved that problem with better software engineering, but given the nature of construction in different parts of the world, we can't assume that workface planning is equally feasible for every project.

For industrial construction involving steel, piping and concrete we have very mature workface planning software. In this case there is an important benefit for owners which is visibility into the path of construction. In previous times when construction was simpler and occurred at one place, visibility into the path of construction visibility was physical. Nowadays with economically competitive construction requiring off-site fabrication and global sourcing, there is no longer a physical path of construction.   Now you need visibility into the virtual path of construction.  Owners on the industrial side are finding it worthwhile to provide a cloud service for our workface planning ConstructSim product to make it available to the contractor supply chain. It provides benefits to the contractor in the form of workplace planning and the owner benefits from visibility into the path of construction.  So in the case of industrial construction both the owner and the contractor benefit from the software. However, we don't presume that this approach will always provide benefits to the contractor in other construction sectors.

In the UK the Crossrail project has targeted ensuring information flows from design through to operations and maintenance.  How has Bentley supported this ?

In the UK they have come quite a way with protocols for information sharing. There is a document Government Soft Landings, which has some good ideas that can work in an existing construction supply chain, but the upskilling needed to take full advantage is daunting.  At our offices in London we hosted an academy for Crossrail. They onboard all of their contractors through this academy. For the Crossrail project the goal of the academy is not to train contractors in the tools but to show them a path of information mobility all the way to the Crossrail asset register.  This helps them understand the importance of the continuity of information from design through construction to operations. When they know and understand that, since they are already using 4D tools, it is not any harder for them.  From the Crossrail project we have first hand experience with the benefits of having a digital design model during operations. We made sure that the model did not get dumbed down during construction. That's been our work over the past 4 or 5 years.

This morning you said geo-coordination plays a key role in reality modeling.  Could you elaborate on that ? 

Geo-coordination is so key to integrating data from many different sources for reality modeling. Digital engineering models exist for all infrastructure that has been engineered in our lifetime, but nobody ever looks for them  because they know they won't be able to find them.  Geocoordination can make it possible to find and put in use existing digital engineering models that can add value for asset performance.  We see many advantages in geocoordination. People shouldn't assume that geo-coordination will be found only in things created going forward.  In Bentley applications in the last 12 years, every time anyone has created an infrastructure asset, it has geocoordination in the form of real world x y z. From the geocoordination you can infer things that are tagged or related to it. Suddenly to be able to navigate with your Hololens the information environment, not only the real world environment, but also 3D design models.  And geocoordination is not limited to 3D models.  You can find lots of other useful information such as drawings, schematics and data sheets. There is a very high return on that investment.

For the Pope's visit to Philadelphia reality modeling involved capturing structures and real world location.  A highly detailed,  photo-textured 3D “reality mesh” model was constructed from 28,000 digital photographs, with high geometrical accuracy. Base imagery was provided by Pictometry, high-resolution aerial photography was taken by helicopter, and ground footage was captured by Bentley volunteers – including building facades, street views, and the inside of the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul.  All of this data was geo-coordinated, which means that real world coordinates were essential for integrating the data from Pictometry, aerial photography and ground footage.

One of the big opportunities and challenges is mapping underground utilities and other subsurface structures.  Is this something Bentley is interested in ?

Yes, subsurface infrastructure is potentially the biggest and most important reality capture opportunity. While I was in India I spoke to the assembled young engineers at IIT Delhi during the spring break. (In India during the spring break, top young engineers in the region go to the IIT for three days of courses to explore new technologies.) I said to these digital natives that we need you to remain civil engineers.  This will be more rewarding in the future because engineers will be paid for the full value of their work. But I added that when you leave civil engineering (like many of them do unfortunately), do it to become an entrepreneur and create the underground equivalent of digital photography. (By the way digital photography works well underwater and a lot of our infrastructure that is at risk is underwater.) But subterranean mapping is the last frontier of remote sensing. It is so important - and the payoff will be huge. 

Virtual reality will be important in visualizing underground infrastructure. Devices like the Hololens can bring together virtuality and reality, but it begins with mapping underground infrastructure.  It requires advancing sensing technologies for detecting underground infrastructure. In the US and the UK there are now standards for the quality of subsurface data (ASCE and PAS128).   Regrettably subsurface engineering hasn't got much attention or much investment.  I hope that when we are here again next year that there will have been breakthroughs in subsurface sensing.  I can assure you that when that occurs software won't be the holdup.

Spar 3D: 3D mapping the inside of multi-story buildings with a backpack

At the Spar 3D Expo and Conference in Houston The Woodlands, Texas, Avideh Zakhor from the University of California Berkeley was onsite with some remarkable products from her new startup Indoor Reality.  I blogged previously about the technology when it was still under development.  The "man portable system" she has developed is a 32 pound backback with a collection of sensors.  The most important feature of the technology are sensors and algorithms for accurately tracking the six degrees of spatial freedom which determine the location and orientation of the backpack in the building.  In addition there are sensors for recording optical and thermal point clouds. She has also developed a handheld device that supplements  the capabilities of the backpack.

The technology can track accurately the location and orientation of the backpack as the operator walks through the building going into all rooms, halls, up and down stairs and into other human accessible spaces.  Software tools then generate different 3D data products including optical and thermal 3D point clouds, a colourized 3D point cloud, surface texture map,  and triangulated mesh surfaces.  The package includes analytical software tools for automatically generating floor plans, distinguishing rooms, identifying staircases, identifying windows, finding heat sources such as computers and human occupants, and identifying lights. Surface textures can be added to create a 3D photo-realtistic rendering.  The sensors and software can capture and generate all required input for the Department of Energy's EnergyPlus energy performance analysis program.  It has GPS and can generate real world coordinates.  Indoor Reality is an ESRI Emerging Business Partner.

I had a chance to sit down with Avideh to talk about her new company and the remarkable products she was demonstrating at SPAR2016.

Avideh, what are the key features of the products you are demonstrating here that distinguish them from some of the other devices vendors are showing here at SPAR ?

We have developed a unique way to track where the operator is in a building and the orientation of the backpack.  We have a lot of sensors. That is the key to all of our intellectual property (IP). It's called sensor fusion and most of our IP is in that area. It does not suffer from drift. It tracks accurately where you are in the building even if you go upstairs. You can even go up in an elevator because it has a barometer.  In addition we detect wifi.  It can tell you what the wifi strength is in different parts of the building. We have an infrared sensor and we have developed an app that will give you real-time occupancy of the building, for example, we can tell you there are four people in this room, two people in that room. We have patents on that.

Based on the data collected by the operator's walk through the building, we allow users to virtually navigate through the space and spatially collaborate with each other through our web based visualization tool. During virtual navigation, you can look around in 3D as if you were there.  That's our second data product. We don't just record dumb point clouds.  We generate intelligent meshes.  Not only can I can pan around, look up and down at each location, but the shape of the cursor shows you the orientation of the surface - for a horizontal surface it's a circle, for vertical surfaces it's a square.  The cursor gets bigger as it gets nearer, smaller as it goes farther away.  We know the normals of all the surfaces because of the 3D mesh behind what you see.  We recognize doors and windows.  Of course, we can measure distances and we allow users to annotate objects and locations.   So this mesh is very intelligent, so intelligent that we can automatically generate a Revit model with a floor plan, rooms, ceilings, doors and windows. That is our third data product.

How do you foresee people will use the tool ?

We went to the University of Illinois just a month ago and we did an energy model for a 14 story bldg. We can do 3d geometry, we can detect lights automatically, we can detect windows automatically, and we can detect AC plugs automatically.   This gets fed into an energy simulation model which is a complete model for an Energy Plus performance audit.  Typically when people do an energy audit they are only interested in the lowest hanging fruit, for example, replacing incandescent light bulbs with LEDs.   This is because collecting the data for a full Energy Plus model has been time consuming.  With the Indoor Reality backpack you can collect whatever you need for a complete Energy Plus audit very simply. For example, we can superimpose the infrared record on a ceiling to show a hot area which is very likely a hot water pipe behind the dry wall.

We have just come out with a visual building documentation tool for stakeholders to collaborate  with each other throughout the lifecycle of a building - during design, construction and operations and maintenance.  If I want to remodel a building using an architect, designer and contractor they can communicate with each other by leaving notes for each other in the virtual building.  For example, I can put a tag on a door for John the contractor. "Please fix this door."  John can come along in the virtual building and edit that note "Avideh, I can do this Tuesday."  So this makes it possible to collaborate virtually on a building project in 3D,  in much the same way that we can collaborate on a Word document.

There is another dimension to this.  Let's say we want to remodel a space in a building. The first thing the architect will want to see is the existing floor plan and the other professionals will also want to see other aspects of the space.  Normally at this point the building owner will ask everyone involved in the planning to come over for a  walk-through the building.   That requires a lot of valuable time from very busy people.  With the virtual model that we can generate, most of this won't be necessary any more. The owner can ask a relatively junior person equipped with the backpack to walk the building to collect the data.  Then the resulting model can be put online and everyone can virtually walk through it.  For bidding on a big renovation project, a relatively junior operator does the walk through and puts it on the cloud and the construction companies who are interested in the project can virtually walk through it online for bidding purposes.

For a new building,  during the actual construction you can conduct a walk through every day and update visually what's going on.  Then if there are lawsuits in the future, you will have a permanent record of who did what and when.   You can show the legal folks where a component was supposed to go and where it was actually installed. It is also useful for monitoring progress, so you know who did what when to determine who gets paid and how much.   If there is a lawsuit and insurance companies get involved, you can step through the record to see who did what.  Then when you want to sell the finished building, the real estate folks can do a virtual walk through of the building with prospective customers.  Property managers and facility managers can use the virtual model for maintaining the building. For example, we talked about the energy performance audit.  Facility managers can use it to identify lights that need to be replaced with more efficient bulbs. Then they can put a virtual tag on the lights for the maintenance folks.  With a virtual model like this, owners, contractors, designers, and facility managers can all collaborate throughout the lifecycle of the building.

There seems to be a lot of areas where the technology you have developed could be used ?

There are quite a number of other application areas for the technology we have identified including historical building and monument recording, scan-to-BIM,  variance detection and virtual inspection, real estate valuations, building plans for first responders, change management and dispute resolution, and detecting thermal anomalies including water leaks and insulation deficiencies to name just a few.

SPAR 3D: Virtual reality, scan to BIM, infrastructure models, and mapping indoor spaces

I have just experienced two remarkable days at the Spar 3D Expo and Conference in The Woodlands, Texas, in itself a remarkable location near Houston.  I will blog in more detail in the near future about the things and people I had the opportunity to experience over the past two days.

First of all, virtual reality.  Everyone is aware of the Oculus Rift (see the new review at CNET if you aren't).  There are other technologies that have come or are coming from Samsung, Sony and Google.  But at SPAR 3D the most remarkable VR technology I personally experienced was what David Smith, CTO of Wearaility, talked about and allowed me and others to try - a set of incredibly light-weight glasses with acrylic lenses designed to work with a smartphone that gives you a virtual experience comparable to IMAX without the IMAX theatre.  I tried it and found it an absolutely amazing surround experience.  And if you have wondered where Michael Jones, of Keyhole and Google Maps fame, has landed, he is now CEO of Wearality.

Secondly, my personal passion is the geolocation of underground utilities.  At SPAR 3D Mark Klusza, Founder & CTO, Real-time Metrology, Inc. described a major new advance in ground penetrating radar (GPR) technology he has developed that can detect a 3/4 inch rebar (among other things) four feet below the surface in clay.

For existing buildings creating a BIM model remains an art rather than science.  But at SPAR 3D a number of new technologies were presented that can help automate, improve the quality, and speed the process.  Foremost among them in my mind was presented by Nicolas Arnold, VP of Product Development, at SKUR.  With SKUR's technology, which runs in the cloud, you can compare the 3D model that you have developed with the point cloud you derived the model from and identify all the points of significant variance.  The same technology can also be used during a construction project to compare what has been built to what was designed - even when the building is only partially completed.

Ron Singh, Engineering Automation Manager/Chief of Surveys, Oregon Department of Transportation (DoT) described progress on his remarkable vision of how automation is upending how we design, build and monitor, operate and maintain U.S. highway systems.  Richard Arrowsmith, Asset Information Group Team Leader, Highways England described the digital model of the English highway system.  Stan Burns, President, Integrated Inventory, who has just retired from Utah DoT, described Utah DoT's comprehensive database of every piece of highway furniture and signage in the Utah highway system.  Together these represent the future of the digitalization of national highway systems.

A new company, Indoor Reality, is the third startup of Dr Avideh Zakhor, who is on leave from the University of California Berkeley.  Her new device is a backpack loaded with sensors including lasers and infrared that enables you to map the interior of buildings by simply walking through a multi-floor building, including up and down stairs.  The resulting data can be used to automatically generate floor plans and 3D models and captures everything you need for an Energy Plus analysis.

Mark Shell and Darrell Gadberry, both of the City of Fort Worth Water Department, described a very versatile device with laser and sonar and camera devices on board that can be used for sewer line inspections of small and large diameter sewer pipes.  Fundamentally this device enables condition-based maintenance of municipal sewer systems.  Mark and Darrell reported that it has saved the Fort Worth Water Department $42 million.

I was able to interview Dr Avideh Zakhor, Nicolas Arnold, Ron Singh, Larry Kleinkemper of Lanmar Services who specialize in creating BIM models for existing buildings, and Greg Bentley of Bentley who has a broad, forward-looking perspective on the "digitalization" of infrastructure.

Crossrail's huge BIM+geospatial model targeted on operations and maintenance

The UK Government as part of its building information modeling (BIM) initiative has said repeatedly that it expects the big payoff of a digital model, estimated at more than 40% savings, will be during operations and maintenance, typically representing 80% of the total cost of a facility.  Companies such as BAM who do Design, Build, Finance and Maintain (DBFM) projects report significant benefits from full lifecycle BIM + geospatial.  But there is little if any quantitative evidence supporting this conjecture.  I have asked people from Finland familiar with the very early BIM developments in that country if there were studies of the benefits of BIM for operations and maintenance, but apparently the BIM focus there has been entirely on design and build.

 

Crossrail with a budget of £14.8 billion is the biggest engineering project in Europe.  It involves 42 km of tunnels beneath one of the most densely populated parts of Europe.  It has wider tunnels  and its 40 stations have longer station platforms than the Tube has.  Crossrail trains are expected to start running next year and the full network should be open by 2019.

 

But the most interesting aspect of the Crossrail project is a 3D digital model with associated asset data that has not only been used during design and construction, but is intended to be used for operations and maintenance.  Crossrail appears to be the first major project that may be able to provide support for the conjecture that the biggest benefits of BIM are for operations and maintenance.

 

The Crossrail model is comprised of spatial and non-spatial data with links between the two.  The spatial data is made up of more than 250,000 3D BIM models as well as as-builts, together comprising a few terabytes. As construction of each facility is completed as-builts are collected by point-cloud survey using laser scanners.  The point clouds captured in the survey are compared to the design and divergences that need resolving are recorded for fixing. The detailed asset data and documentation add an additional 5 terabytes.  This represents one of the World's largest BIM model.  A critical aspect of the spatial database is that all assets are geolocated so that workers can query a particular location of London on a map and then navigate to the Crossrail assets there.

 

The model is intended to become a crucial tool for monitoring, operating and maintaining Crossrail’s systems once the railway is running.  Sensors monitor various aspects of the railway's operation and remote-controlled devices can change operating parameters from a central control room or from a handheld device.  Managers can view this information within the 3D model and can zoom in on an area which needs attention.  Crossrail is testing low-power wireless smart sensors called Utterberries that can monitor strain, temperature, humidity, acceleration, and other aspects of a facility. Utterberries weigh 15 grams and are smart - they have an ARM processor on-board and can operate for more than a year on one charge.  One of the coolest capabilities of the digital infrastrucure is an augmented-reality interface which allows workers to hold an iPad up to a wall or floor and see a view of the infrastructure (electricity, water, and communications) under the floor or behind the wall.

Dutch create BIM Gateway to coordinate open BIM standards including geospatial

The Netherlands has created a new BIM Loket (BIM Gateway). It is intended to be a national portal for information about and and management of open BIM standards in the Netherlands.  It is to both provide a central information centre for open BIM standards including related geospatial standards and to stimulate their use.

The most important reason for building a BIM Gateway for all stakeholders is to reduce maintenance costs by bringing together the open BIM standards into one coherent system. This will ensure that the standards can be used more effectively and with greater efficiency as well as promoting their widespread use.

The Dutch Building Information Council (BIR) has been encouraging BIM for a long time.  I have blogged about it previously.  It will continue to focus improving the quality and competitiveness of the Dutch construction industry through initiatives such as BIM. The BIM Loket's focus will be on open standards for BIM.  One of my takeways from the recent RICS BIM conference in London was that there is a desperate need for standards, especially to classify the huge amount of date in addition to the 3D model that accumulates during a construction project.  Much of this would be useful to the FM folks who are responsible for operating and maintaining the building after construction.

At a Geospatial World Forum in Amsterdam several years ago, Jantien Stoter of the Delft Univeristy of Technology and an advisor to Geonovum, described work on the Dutch 3D standard which aimed at integrating CityGML and the Dutch IMGeo standard.  This inclcuded an attempt GeoBIM which was to be a CityGML Application Domain Extension (ADE) intended to extend CityGML to include detailed, semantic information about the inside of buildings (IFC).  Finding some way of integrating of BuildingSmart's IFC BIM standard and geospatial standards like CityGML remains a major challenge for the international construction industry.

As a practical example, I blogged previously about a firm Royal BAM Group nv / BAM Infraconsult that relies on integrated BIM and GIS because many of its projects require full life-cycle BIM.  At the first GeoBIM conference in Amsterdam, Jothijs van Gaalen gave some real world examples of Design, Build, Finance and Maintain (DBFM) highway construction that included GIS+BIM integration. BAM's motivation for investing in BIM+GIS are market developments especially more complex construction assignments and an increasing demand from customers for service provision throughout the entire life cycle of a project.  The other major drivers are internal business needs especially being able to control safety, quality, costs, planning, and sustainability through the lifetime of a project.

As another example, ARCADIS Netherlands has been involved in projects that integrate geospatial into the design process.  On the HOV Nijmegen project it was found that integrating geospatial and engineering design in a single database resulted in a single copy of each data element which supported multiple use.  It simplified communication and increased the quality of the final design.  It also enabled automated analysis of the consequences of design choices with the result that the planning cycle was shorter.  Based on their experience with these projects, Bram Mommers and his colleagues concluded that there are several barriers to the integration of civll engineering and geospatial; Semantics, different terms used for the me things by geospatial analysts and civil engineers and designers, different topology, geospatial uses point, lines, and polygons, CAD/BIM uses splines, nurbs, and other parametric curves and treats polygons in a different way from geospatial topology, and features which are fundamental objects in geospatial vs engineering objects with location as an attribute, and data formats, geospatial data is stored in shape files, GML, and CityCML; CAD/BIM uses DWG, DGN, RVT, and IFC.

As the UK AGI has pointed out in a recent Foresight Report integrated BIM and geospatial technology will be fundamental for BIM Level 3.

The BIM Loket is intended to be a one stop shop for BIM-related standards including geospatial, whether maintained in Holland or internationally.  It is intended to involve all the stakeholders, industry, academia, and government organizations. It is considered urgent because standards are essential for the digitization of the Dutch building industry and it is essential if Dutch construction firms like Royal BAM and Arcadis Netherlands are going to remain internationally competitive.  The BIM Loket plans to compile a knowledge platform based on a coherent palette of Dutch open BIM standards for industry-standard BIM products.

Thanks to Rob van de Velde for pointing me to this.

One third of Be Inspired Awards involve mapping, managing, rehabbing and replacing aging infrastructure

Worldwide there is increasing demand from building and infrastructure owners for service provision throughout the entire life cycle of a building or infrastructure. This represents a distinct break with the design/build tradition which has dominated construction for years.  At the Year in Infrastructure conference in London, a dominant theme was the growing recognition of the importance of full lifecycle management of infrastructure.  I found it symptomatic of the direction of the construction industry that fully one third of the 54 finalists for the annual Be Inspired Awards involved mapping, rehabbing, retrofitting, replacing and managing existing infrastructure.  This is my classification of these Be Inspired finalists;

Be Inspired Finalists

1 Full lifecycle workflow
2 Replacement
7 Renovation, rehab, retrofit
3 Mapping existing infrastructure
1 Historic site protection
5 Utility asset management

Full life cycle management

Patrick MacLeamy, Chairman of buildingSMART and CEO of HOK, has been pushing a very simple message about the U.S. construction industry for years.  Buildings are too expensive, are too inefficient to operate and maintain, and don't last long. As a result the U.S. construction industry is falling behind the Nordic countries, the U.K. and Singapore.  His solution is a full life cycle approach to construction.  Information has to be shared between owners, designers, contractors, operations and facilities management over the entire life cycle of the building or infrastructure.

Buildings

Over 50% of the cost of maintaining a building is operations and maintenance which is comprised of administration, maintenance and repairs, and restoration projects.  In several countries BIM has become essential for design and construction.  But many including the UK government believe that the full value of BIM can only be found during the operational life of the building where the majority of the life cycle costs occur.  The UK government has said that "the 20% saving refers to CapEx cost savings however we know that the largest prize for BIM lies in the operational stages of the project life-cycle".

Road and highway infrastructure

Highway construction is being transformed, due in part to the arrival of autonomous vehicles.  I've blogged about the startling (at least to traditional construction contractors) vision of the future of highway construction of the Chief of Surveys at the Oregon Department of Transportation (DoT) which targets the full lifecycle of highway assets from planning through design and construction and operation and maintainenance.  Some large construction projects are already being designed, built and operated and maintained with a full lifecycle perspective.

Utility infrastructure

Industry surveys report that up to 80 percent of a utility's resources and budget can be spent on operating and maintaining existing utility infrastructure.   Surveys also show that aging utility infrastructure is a top priority for most utilities.

Be Inspired Awards: Mapping, Monitoring, Rehabbing, and Replacing Infrastructure

One of the projects focused specifically on full lifecycle data management for highway construction.  The project, which was submitted by the Roads Directorate, Denmark, is for the $ 580 million 39-kilometer Herning – Holstebro highway which includes eight interchanges, four railway crossings, and five bridges.  The important achievement of the project was to create a digital workflow with meaningful requirements for sharing data among disciplines and across the entire project lifecycle.  The project was a finalist for the year's Be Inspired Award for Innovation in Roads.

Seven of the finalists' submissions involved renovation, rehabbing, and retrofit.  An outstanding example of a rehab project is the Bond Street to Baker Street Tunnel Remediation Project.  This is a London Underground  project in the UK.  It involved the replacement of the existing elastoplastic concrete lining of a 215-meter tunnel segment on the Jubilee Line with a spheroidal graphite iron lining - all while the line was running at full capacity.  This achievement won this year's Be Inspired Award for Innovation in Rail and Transit at the Year in Infrastructure 2015 conference.

Two of the finalists' projects involved replacement. An example of a replacement project was the Decommissioning and Replacement of Del Rio Bridge on US 20  this was carried out by Harper-Leavitt Engineering for the Idaho Transportation Department with minimum disruption to traffic.

Five of the finalists submitted projects that involved monitoring and extracting more value from existing transportation and utility infrastructure including rail, electric substations, electric and water and waste water distribution networks.

An example is a project submitted by SA Water which won the Be Inspired Innovation in Asset Performance Management Award.  The project involved integrating a hydraulic model and an operational analytics tool with network sensors to help them optimize their network.  These tools enable them to optimize chlorine dosing for different water sources (runoff, desalinization, rivers), minimize electric power costs, and improve water quality by mapping water age across their entire network. SA Water have not only been able to reduce their power bill by A$3 million, but also have cut their network operating costs by nearly a A$ million.  It has also resulted in improved water quality.  More fundamentally it has given them much greater insight into sources of revenue and the costs of various aspects of operating a water network.

Four of the finalist projects involved mapping and historic site protection.  An example is a gas main project submitted by Utility Mapping Services Inc.  This project involved creating a 3D map of underground utilities along a stretch of highway with complex utility infrastructure woven through dense commercial and residential areas with limited right-of-way and heavy traffic congestion.  Most critically from a safety perspective, there were no utility strikes on the project.  As a result the 3D model is credited with reducing construction time from 10 to 7 weeks.  Most importantly from a budget perspective, there were no change orders and the total cost of the project came in at 10-15% less than estimated in the absence of a 3D model.

Another example is a project submitted by the Singapore Land Authority (SLA).  Singapore intends to be the world's first "smart nation".  Part of this initiative involves developing a virtual Singapore that is intended to be the source of authoritative information about Singapore for use by government agencies.  The project involves capturing large amounts of data using multiple rapid mapping technologies including oblique imagery, airborne laser scanning, mobile laser scanning, and terrestrial scanning.  The data has been compiled into 3D city model in a single database repository which includes geometry, topology, semantics and appearance.  The database relies on CityGML, a standard managed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), for the database schema and for data exchange.  The total volume of data is more than 50 terabytes. The database is open and accessible to all government agencies. The most challenging part of the project has been the development of business processes and technologies for ensuring the data remains current.  At the the Year in Infrastructure conference in London the SLA the won the annual Be Inspired Award for Innovation in Government.

Be Inspired Awards at Year in Infrastructure 2015: Operational analytics reduces water utility power bill by A$3 million

At the Year in Infrastructure conference in London SA Water is one of the finalists for the annual Be Inspired Innovation in Roads Awards. Today Rowan Steele presented an overview of how SA Water, based in Adelaide, South Australia, has applied operation analytics to reduce the water utility's power bill by A$3 million.

South Australia has been suffering from an extended drought for nearly a decade and has just built a desalinization plant to provide more reliable water to their customers. 

About 40% of the South Australian power generation is now renewable.  Most of this is wind (33%) and solar (8%).  Fluctuating sources of power generation means that the price of electricity can range widely from -A$1000 to A$13,000 per megawatt hour (Mwh).

The drought, the new desalinization plant and the fluctuating cost of power introduced complexity into managing what used to be a fairly simple water network.

To address these issues SA Water decided to invest significantly in IT to help manage the water network better.  They acquired a hydraulic model that allowed them to simulate the network under different conditions.  They also invested in an operational analytics tool. 

Together these applications have helped them optimize their network in various ways, such as optimizing chlorine dosing (water from the desal plant has very little organics compared to river water), minimizing electric power costs and reducing water age in some parts of the network.  The benefits have been significant.  They not only have been able to reduce their power bill by A$3 million, but also have cut their network operating costs by nearly a A$ million.  It has also resulted in improved water quality.  For example, they can map water age geographically for their entire service area.  More fundamentally it has given them much greater insight into sources of revenue and the costs of various aspects of operating a water network.

Powering up the smart grid with geospatial technology

The electricity industry is undergoing a transformation. With utilities embracing geospatial technology and turning into data driven enterprises in the Smart Grid scenario, the sector is staring at an innovative future.

The National Academy of Engineering identifies the electric power grid as the first of 20 major engineering achievements that has had the greatest impact on the quality of life in the 20th Century. Modern society has reached a point where virtually every crucial economic and social function depends on the secure, reliable operation of electric power infrastructure.  But because it has become so crucial for modern life, it faces major challenges.
   
The major drivers for the fundamental change underway in the electric power industry are increasing demand, universal access, decarbonizing electric power, reducing revenue losses, and grid reliability and resilience.  Some of the  technologies that are contributing to this transformation are intelligent devices integrated with a communications network, distributed renewable power generation especially wind and solar PV, net zero energy buildings, microgrids, and the new remote sensing technologies of subsurface utility engineering.  

For an industry not known historically for rapid change, many utilities are in the midst of transforming themselves into data driven enterprises. Recently IDC published its future predictions for the development of the electric power industry over the period 2015-2018.  For many in the industry these are quite startling and clearly reflect an industry that is rapidly evolving.

The technology roadmap for the smart grid involves the deployment of increasing numbers of intelligent electronic devices for sensing and for control.  The challenge is federating the data from all of these devices, extracting information from it, and dispatching the information to the right control devices. 
 
With the changes that the electric power industry is undergoing now, analysts see geospatial technology poised to become a foundation technology for the smart grid.  The role of utility GIS is expected to touch every aspect of a utilities business, affecting customers, operations and management because geospatial is the logical technology that can provide  the basis for integrating data from intelligent electronic devices such as smart meters and the  information silos associated with proprietary applications.

You can read more about smart grid and relevance of geospatial data and technology, real-time big spatial data, standards for interoperability, the importance of data quality, open source geospatial technology,  spatial analytics and other aspects of the role of geospatial technology in the smart grid in Geospatial World.

State of BIM delivery in the UK one year before government mandate

One of the highlights of this this year's RICS BIM Conference in London was the keynote presentation Delivery of Level 2 BIM by Terry Stocks, Deputy Head of Estates Department, Ministry of Justice and  Delivery Director for Level 2 BIM, UK BIM Task Force.  

As people in the construction industry are aware, next year all central government construction projects (which represents about half of the construction industry in the UK) will require building information modeling (BIM) Level 2.  The short term objective is to reduce the cost of construction (design, tender, build) by 20%.  The longer term objective is by 2025 to reduce the costs associated with designing, building, operating and maintaining buildings and infrastructure by a third.

An industry survey in the UK last year reported that 54% of respondents in 2013 said that they were using BIM on projects.  Most of those not yet using BIM said that they would be within one to two years.  70 % of the respondents reporting using BIM said that BIM has given them a competitive advantage.  Terry's perspective is that BIM is fast becoming the standard way of working for designers and contractors on most construction projects - public and private.

Goal: Avoiding waste

Terry pointed to a recent Economist article which included statistics that explain the primary driving force - avoiding waste - behind BIM adoption around the world.    According to the Economist 30% of the construction process is rework, 50% of the labour effort is wasted, and there is a further 10% loss due to wasted materials.  Even more critically for the operations and maintenance phase of the lifecyle, 3-5% of the construction turnover is lost at the discipline interface (design, tender, construct, and operate).  The discipline interface data loss  resembles a sawtooth diagram with the result that the construction information required to maintain and operate the building is often inaccurate and incomplete.  

An important objective of the full lifecycle BIM initiative is to smooth delivery and avoid data loss at the discipline interfaces.  Some of the key ways to enable this to happen are collaborative early engagement including clients (owners), designers, contractors, and facilities managers (FM) from the beginning and improving inter-discipline interoperability to improve the transfer of information between the  client, designers, the main contractor, sub contractors, and facilities managers. For example, all handover data will be provided in a structured format “COBie UK 2012”.

One of the challenges relating to data that several speakers mentioned is "infobesity" - attempting to collect and maintain  too much data.  The simple guideline suggested to avoid this problem is to only collect data that you have the resources to maintain (keep up-to-date) and that contributes significantly to operational efficiency.   This requires close collaboration between the owner, facilities managers, designers and contractors from the beginning of a project.

Delivery of BIM Level 2

BIM Level 2 is a set of discipline-specific models (architectural, structural, HVAC, services, etc) with a single environment to store shared data and information.  The delivery of BIM Level 2 in the UK is the responsibility of the UK BIM Task Force supported by  key government departments.  It involves building knowledge and capability in government departments, building capability in the supply chain, and encouraging BIM capacity development in the private sector through initiatives such as BIM4SME and other BIM4 community development efforts. One of the most important initiatives is the development and publication of seven key documents which collectively represent an impressive repository of BIM best practices.  Just about every speaker at the RICS BIM conference referenced these documents.

• PAS 1192:2  - Specification for information management for the capital/delivery phase of construction projects using BIM
• PAS 1192:3 - Framework for an asset owning or operating organization to identify its information requirements and to create an asset information model with a governance method.
• BS 1192-4 - Collaborative production of information: Fulfilling employers information exchange requirements using COBie.  All handover data will be provided in a structured format “COBie UK 2012”.
  
• CIC BIM Protocol - The BIM Protocol is a supplementary legal agreement that is incorporated into professional services appointments and construction contracts by means of a simple amendment.  The Protocol creates additional obligations and rights for the employer and the contracted party.
• Classification - A series of tables which classify all aspects of the life cycle of a project to structure data in order to support the BIM process and facilitate collaboration. Expected to be based on CPIC Uniclass 2. (Under development)
• Digital Plan of Works / Levels of Detail (LoD) - Documents the concepts and detail of the management of built asset data derived from the process of building and managing  building information models including how this data is defined, tested and effectively used by both the supply chain and the public client. Level of Detail specifies the level of geometric information a model should exhibit. (Under development)
• Government Soft Landings - "Design for operation" to encourage better outcomes using BIM for built assets during the design and construction stages to ensure value is achieved in the operational lifecycle of an asset.  For example, early engagement of the end user (owner) during design and construction through to operational handover using BIM to provide a fully populated asset data set into the end user's facilities management system.

Savings attributed to BIM

Seven major government projects worth about £ 10 billion which are currently using BIM maintain records of the savings they have seen from using BIM. The measured benefits of BIM and factors associated with BIM range between15-20%, and are primarily realized during design, pre-construction, and construction.   The government estimates that it has achieved savings of £ 1.4 billion through BIM and related improvements in the 2013/2014 fiscal year.

Full lifecyle cost savings

With full lifecyle BIM, the government sees an upside potential of 40%+ with the biggest benefits being realized in the operations phase of the building lifecycle.